Price Match Guarantee

The promise

Get a written quotation from another builder for the same job, on the same specification, and if it comes in under ours, show it to us. Where it is a genuine like-for-like comparison, we will match it.

That is the guarantee. The terms sit below, and they are the same terms printed on every quotation we issue, so nothing here exists only on the website.

We do need to see the other document rather than hear a number. A figure repeated over the phone cannot be compared line by line, and the comparison is the entire point.

The terms

• The competing quotation must be from a builder who is VAT registered and insured. Both, not one of the two.
• It is a like-for-like match. Same specification, same scope, same job.
• The match stands for 30 days from the date of our quotation.
• These terms go on every quotation we issue, not just on this page.

Why "like-for-like" is carrying all the weight in that sentence

Two builders can quote the same job, describe it in the same single line, and be thousands of pounds apart without either of them lying to you.

They are not pricing the same work. That is the honest and slightly uncomfortable answer, and once you have seen it a few times you stop being surprised by a cheap quotation and start being curious about it.

Here is where the difference usually hides.

Foundation depth. A trench is priced before anyone has dug a trial hole, so somebody has to assume a depth. Assume shallow and the number is lower. Near mature trees in shrinkable clay, NHBC Standards Chapter 4.2 sets minimum depths that are a good deal more than the standard trench most quotations carry, and the difference is measured in cubic metres of concrete. It is the same hole in the drawing and a different hole in the ground.

Glazing and doors. "Bifold doors" covers an enormous range. Frame material, glass specification, thermal performance, threshold detail, colour, who makes them, how long they take to arrive. One word in a quotation, several thousand pounds of difference underneath it.

Making good and decorating. Left out of a quotation, this does not disappear. It comes back to you as your problem, usually at the point where you have run out of both patience and budget. If it is not written down, it is not priced.

Scaffolding. Scaffolding and access equipment are inside our figure. Where a quotation lists it as an extra, or simply does not mention it, that cost has not gone away — it turns up in week three when the scaffold does.

Waste, skips and welfare. Real costs on every job. Easy to leave off a piece of paper and impossible to leave off a site.

Provisional sums. A provisional sum is a placeholder for something nobody has priced yet. Two or three generous ones can make a quotation look competitive and make the final account look nothing like it. Ours are labelled as provisional, in plain words, so you can see which numbers are firm.

Structural design and statutory fees. Structural engineer's calculations, Building Control and planning fees are paid directly by you, to them, not by us and not through us. A quotation that quietly absorbs them looks dearer. A quotation that ignores them looks cheaper. Neither tells you what the job costs. More on what a steel actually involves under steel beams and load-bearing alterations.

None of that is dishonest. It is a different specification wearing the same one-line description, which is exactly why like-for-like is the phrase that matters and why a quotation running to over two hundred itemised lines is what makes the comparison possible at all.

Send us your drawings and we will price them properly. Call 07470 078236, or WhatsApp the photographs. Over 100 projects, insured to £2m.

The VAT difference, said plainly, because it is the most useful thing on this page

A builder who is not registered for VAT does not charge you VAT. A builder who is registered has to, by law, on every invoice.

So before either of them has picked up a tool, the unregistered one looks around a fifth cheaper. That is not a price difference. It is a different tax position, and comparing the two totals as though they were the same thing will mislead you every time.

In practice the gap is a little narrower than the full 20%, because the unregistered builder still pays VAT on his materials and cannot reclaim any of it, so that tax is already buried inside his rate and you are paying it without seeing it. But the direction is the same, and it is large.

That is why the guarantee names VAT registration as a condition. We registered for VAT on 1 August 2026. We can only match a number that was built the same way ours was.

Prices on this page and in our quotations are shown before VAT. VAT is charged at 20% on top of every figure. What the bands actually look like is in our price guide.

And insured, which is the other half of the condition

A quotation from an uninsured builder is cheaper for the same reason a car is cheaper without insurance on it.

We carry £2m public liability and employers' liability cover. If something goes wrong on your house — and on building work things do occasionally go wrong — there is a policy behind the promise rather than a conversation about it. Ask any builder for the certificate. Any builder who has one will send it without being asked twice.

How to read two quotations in twenty minutes

Put them side by side and look for these, in this order. It works on ours as well as on anybody else's.

• Is there a list of exclusions? A quotation that names what is not included has been thought about. A quotation with no exclusions has not stopped being excluded — it has just stopped telling you.
• Foundations: is a depth stated, or is there an assumption you are being asked to carry?
• Steels: who pays for the engineer's design, and is installation, padstones and fire protection in the figure?
• Making good and decorating: written in, or absent?
• Scaffolding and access: in the price or an extra?
• Waste removal and skips.
• Kitchen units, sanitaryware and floor coverings: priced, or a sum to be spent later?
• How variations are handled. Ours are discussed first, then issued in writing, and paid before the extra work is done, so there is never an argument at the end about something agreed in a doorway in March.
• Payment structure. Ours is a 5% deposit as standard, fortnightly valuations against work actually done, and 5% retained until practical completion.
• What happens after handover, and for how long.

If a quotation is one page and a figure at the bottom, you are not being given a price. You are being given an intention. There is more on what ours contains and how a job runs in how we run a job.

What a match is not

We will not drop our specification to reach a number. If the other quotation is cheaper because it allows a shallower footing, a thinner unit, a smaller steel or no decorating, that is not a lower price for the same job. We will show you exactly where the two documents part company, and then you can decide which job you actually want. Matching a number by quietly building something else would be the worst possible outcome for both of us.

James's own view, in his words: the likelihood is that our specification is higher than the quoted people, but he is willing to match like-for-like quotations. He would rather say that out loud than pretend every quotation for a job is the same job.

And it is the whole job, not a line out of it. A specialist can nearly always beat a main contractor on one element in isolation, because he is not carrying the programme, the other trades, the CDM duties or the responsibility when the element before his runs late.

Why thirty days

Materials move. Subcontractors' availability moves. A price we gave in March cannot be honoured against a comparison someone found in September without one of us losing money on it, and it would not be us.

Thirty days from the date on our quotation is long enough to get two or three other builders in and think about it properly, and short enough that the figures still mean what they meant on the day they were written.

Where this applies

Everything we quote for: extensions, lofts, renovations, kitchens, bathrooms, roofs and joinery, right across the patch we work in. A large single-storey extension is our house extensions service; the rest sit under the services in the menu.

Next step

Get us in and get a proper figure. Send us your drawings if you have them, or book a free site visit if you are still at the stage of wondering whether the thing can be done at all. Either way you get an itemised quotation you can hold up against anybody else's, which is the only comparison worth making.

More on how we price and what we exclude in questions we get asked.

Rated 5 stars on Yell. Company No. 16870716. Call 07470 078236 or 01243 256796, and you will get a reply within one working day.